In 1928, Walter Percy Chrysler, president of the Chrysler automobile company, resuscitated a project initially conceived by the property developer William H. Reynolds for a skyscraper at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. His architect, William Van Alen, persuaded him to aimat setting a new record for the world's tallest building: in 1930, a stainless steel spire, which Van Alen called the Vertex', enabled Chrysler to achieve his goal, but it was soon surpassed by the Empire State Building ... Within the spire was housed a luxurious duplex apartment built for Chrysler himself with triangular windows overlooking the vast panorama of Manhattan ... Below, the Cloud Club was a meeting room for American industrial magnates and is decorated in the purest Art Deco style.' Source: Elizabeth de Farcy, Catherine Fouré et al., ed. Everyman Guides: New York. London: Everyman Publishing, 2000, pp. 266-67.